Rock on, Beachcomber: Quincy club still grooving after 50 years

Friday

Jun 26, 2009 at 12:01 AMJun 26, 2009 at 6:05 AM

Top acts, and inside stories, have long been part of the Beachcomber’s lore, and for 50 years, one man – Jimmy McGettrick, now 75 – has led the way. While others have gimmicks, McGettrick said his Wollaston beach institution has relied on good atmosphere, good music and good fun to set it apart.

Jay N. Miller

The canceled check was somewhere, Jimmy McGettrick hoped, if it hadn’t been swept off in a 1996 flood. Still, the owner of the Beachcomber looked and looked for the money meant for the Andover comedian, for the princely sum of $65 for a night’s work.

“I never could find it, but I wanted to send it in to Jay Leno,” McGettrick said. “That would get a good laugh on ‘The Tonight Show.’”

Such top acts, and inside stories, have long been part of the Beachcomber’s lore, and for 50 years, one man – McGettrick, now 75 – has led the way.

While others have gimmicks, McGettrick said his Wollaston beach institution has relied on good atmosphere, good music and good fun to set it apart.

“We try to see which way the parade is going, and jump in front of it,” he said. “It is still a crapshoot.”

With partner Fred Crowley, McGettrick used money he’d made selling Christmas trees to buy the Beachcomber for $25,000. (McGettrick would later buy out his partner in 1965.) He was 25 when the seaside bar opened on March 17, 1959, and the two entrepreneurs had $285 left to stock the bar.

From the get-go, McGettrick said he felt live entertainment would be the club’s trademark. Many well-known performers were happy to grab an extra night’s work, hitting the Beachcomber the Tuesday after playing bigger name rooms like Blinstrub’s in Boston or The Monticello in Framingham over the weekend.

“We started having our own floor show in 1961, and by ’65 we were offering eight-act shows every night,” McGettrick said. “We’d have a three-piece backing band, and then maybe start with a comic, a singer, a magic act, an impersonator, and so on. TV was nothing back then, and people would come out seven days a week.”

No matter the genre, McGettrick said the bar was full. “We tried Dixieland, country-western – we had Loretta Lynn and Bill Anderson here, and everything. We had Tiny Tim even before his big hits.”Still, the venue is perhaps best known for jazz greats, from Duke Ellington to Count Basie. Many kept in touch with McGettrick, like Louie Armstrong, who once sent a Christmas card to “the bossman at the Beachcomber.”

Some of the “bossman’s” all-time favorites were locals, men and women who didn’t just stop at the Beachcomber, they came back again and again. People like Paul O’Donnell, a comic from Merrymount in Quincy, and Sid Walsh, “a singer with an Al Jolson-kind of voice... known as Mr. Beachcomber.”

“He’d come on in the middle of those eight-act shows and start with ‘Southie is my Hometown,’ and finish with ‘God Bless America,’ and knock it out of the park,” McGettrick said of Walsh. “Sid is about 86 now, and still comes in on St. Patrick’s Day, and his voice is just as strong as ever.”

But the Beachcomber went through a rough patch in the ’70s, as the advent of color TV sets and more home entertainment options helped eat into the club scene. Weeknight crowds dwindled, prompting McGettrick to focus bookings on weekends and introduce a Sunday afternoon Irish music showcase that continues to be a popular draw.

In the ’80s, the club focused more on rock ’n’ roll, becoming Nostalgia in 1982. (The name reverted back in 1999.) And with changing times and tastes, McGettrick’s family got more involved. His son Patrick took over booking in 1996, and his son Sean and daughter-in-law Jane tend bar.

While “old-timers” come out for live music on Sundays, the make-up of Beachcomber “regulars” – whether fans of Benny Goodman or the Dropkick Murphys – also changed from generation to generation.

The key, said McGettrick, is to make the place feel like home to whomever walks in the door.

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